Refugee Ping-Pong, North American style

September 05, 2002|By Bill Frelick.

The United States and Canada are close to signing a refugee dumping deal that would be bad for the United States and harmful for refugees. Under the draft agreement, asylum-seekers transiting between the U.S. and Canada would be stopped, prevented from going to the country where they are seeking asylum, and forced to apply in the first country they entered.

This agreement would add about 15,000 additional refugee claimants every year to the U.S. asylum caseload, which already receives more than 60,000 new claims each year and has a backlog of more than 250,000.

Because of Canada's geographic isolation, many airline flights from the conflict-ridden parts of the world that produce refugees do not fly there directly, but only go as far as the United States. Consequently, many people seeking Canada's protection have no choice but to come via the U.S. In effect, this agreement would force these thousands of people who are not seeking U.S. protection to apply for asylum here.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Canadian counterpart are planning to sign the agreement soon after it is finalized within the next month or so. While the draft allows for some exceptions, such as reuniting with family members, the exceptions do not cover many of the reasons someone might seek asylum from one country rather than the other. Often refugees seek existing communities of support that will help them integrate into a new society. Also, refugees may find that one country is more receptive to them than the other. The U.S. falls short on a number of minimum standards: prohibiting asylum applicants from working for six months after applying for asylum (unlike Canada); not providing them legal assistance (which is usually available in Canada); barring asylum-seekers from filing asylum claims if they do not file within one year (not required in Canada); and detaining asylum-seekers in jails more readily than Canada. The U.S. also generally has a narrower interpretation of refugee law than Canada, for example, on gender-based persecution claims, raising the prospect that it might return a claimant to persecution that Canada would have protected.

Instead of simply allowing asylum-seekers to decide which of the two countries is more receptive to their needs and more likely to accept their refugee claims, border guards and bureaucrats will arrogate to themselves the decision, based on arbitrary rules and narrow exceptions. The diplomats negotiating the agreement seem not to have considered the complexity of the exceptions that U.S. and Canadian immigration officials will need to resolve for each case in lengthy and difficult examinations.

Are the family members the actual blood relations they are claimed to be? Are the anchor relatives in the proper legal status to qualify for the exception? Are unaccompanied children the ages they claim to be? Are they truly unaccompanied? The result will be refugees left in limbo, perhaps kept indefinitely in detention, or shuttled back and forth between the two countries. We will see a burgeoning bureaucracy, added costs and disputes between Canada and the U.S. that currently don't exist.

The agreement is purportedly intended to prevent refugees from claiming asylum in both countries, even though no evidence has been presented to show that this is a real problem. In some cases, individuals are apprehended in the U.S. and apply for asylum as a means of avoiding deportation and obtaining release from detention. Upon release, they ordinarily travel straight to Canada, showing their intention not to seek asylum in both countries, but only in Canada. Immigration officials on both sides of the border recognize this reality and, in practice, work with local non-governmental organizations to help people attempting to cross the U.S.-Canadian border to claim asylum. The system works with minimal coercion or conflict, and, in fact, enhances security by enabling the authorities in both countries to identify and track people crossing the border.

The old adage says, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." While much about the Immigration and Naturalization Service is broken, this particular "fix" is likely to put the INS in a deeper hole. It will create new burdens on an overburdened system that may soon be undergoing the additional disruption of moving from the U.S. Department of Justice to a new Department of Homeland Security. It also is more likely to create a less secure border. It is likely to produce a new human trafficking industry on our northern border that does not now exist.

Ultimately, this agreement is likely to produce a border that is unsafe, inefficient, and inhumane. How bad a deal is that?